Mobile clients

The Novacura Flow mobile clients are used to run workflows created in the Studio. Users and menu access are created and set in the Studio.

The history button has been replaced with a back button, one click takes the user back to the previous step. The historical view configuration from the studio is no longer displayed.

If using notifications uninstall the old client before starting to use the new one. If both are installed on the device, the message can be caught by the wrong client.

The new generation of mobile clients uses a new set of icons. The old icons have got a corresponding icon in the new library so no change is required on the workflows. As of Flow 6.14, the icon picker in the Studio is changed and the workflow designer will be selecting workflow icons from the new library.

Help request functionality is not available in the new generation of mobile clients.

Android

System requirements

The Android Client requires Android version 7.0 or higher, but using the latest available version is recommended.

Installation

There are two ways of installing the Novacura Flow Android client:

Google Play Store: Search for Novacura Flow
Download the client from your server page. Ask your administrator for the server URL.

Note! If you download the Android client from your server, you need to enable installation from Unknown Sources on your device. This setting is typically found under Settings/Security.

iOS

System requirements

The client supports iOS version 14 and up.

If using MDM tool, iOS version 14.4 or higher is required.

Installation

To install the Novacura Flow iOS Client:

App Store: Search for Novacura Flow.

Open the Novacura Flow client, enter the Flow server address, and press connect. The server information can be entered in multiple ways:

Recent servers - click to connect, the five most recently used servers will be shown in the list
Enter PIN: enter the Pin Code visible on the Server Page.
Enter server address manually: enter the server address above manually to connect.
Scan QR Code: scan the QR Code on the Server Page. The app must have been given camera access in order for the QR code scan to work.
Scan NFC tag: scan NCF tag to connect to server page

Once connected to the server enter the user name. Depending on the setup, you will be prompted to connect using OpenId Connect or to enter one or many passwords. These passwords are either your Flow login password OR passwords for logging in to a connected system, for example, your ERP system.

Click Disconnect to disconnect from the server.

For User setup, see User configuration.

Settings

Workflows

See Get started.

Offline

See Offline.

Settings

The following user-specific settings are available for the Novacura Flow app:

Language - use to change the app language. A change in the app will update user language in the Flow Studio. If no language has been set in the Studio the device language will be used, if one supported by Novacura Flow, else English.
Autoload workflows - if enabled, the Flow client will automatically refresh the workflow menu every time you open the application or come back from a workflow. If Flow is used for offline work, it is recommended that this setting is disabled.
Offline data - if enabled prompts the user to download offline data.
Workflow animations - deactivate to remove animations when moving forward in workflow. The animations make for a smoother user experience but if Flow is used for tasks such as bulk scanning, deactivating the animations will make the app faster.
Auto focus input - activate if keyboard should open and focus set when an input field is the first control of a user step. Note - focus will only be set if there is no control before the input control, ie if there is a header text first, focus will not be set.
Fullscreen mode - (Android from version 2.8.5) makes the application go into fullscreen mode during workflow execution. This will improve the visualization of content when the keyboard is open, for example on smaller screens.
Camera GPS position - set to active to grant Flow access to GPS position for the camera.
Sound on error - if active will give a beep when something goes wrong in the Flow, for example when scanning text into a number input field.
Vibration on error - if active will give a vibration when something goes wrong in the Flow, for example when scanning text into a number input field.

External scanners

Zebra Scanner - The Flow app can connect to a Bluetooth Zebra scanner. To connect, click on the setting to open a popup with a barcode, then scan it with the device you want to connect. Once connected, the setting will display Connected. To disconnect, click on the Zebra Scanner setting again and select Disconnect.

This feature is only available for Zebra scanners and the Android client.

Advanced settings

The advanced settings seldom need to be changed as they have been added for specific use cases.

Keyboard compatibility - some devices do not have numeric keyboards, which creates a problem for the text input fields in numeric mode. This setting makes it default to the normal keyboard (which has numbers also) for those fields. Keyboard compatibility is as the default set to false.
Keep-Alive connection - if enabled, it tries to keep an open HTTP connection to the server (which is a good thing). Keep-Alive connection is as the default to true.

Manage Flow settings

It is possible to centrally set the settings for the mobile clients using an XML with the required settings.

Go to the Flow Server's install directory (i.e. the directory that contains "Web.config" for the Flow Server) and create a new directory called "ClientPreferences". Inside the ClientPreferences directory, add a file called Preferences.xml. In this file, set default values for the client and scanner settings can be set. Choose whether values should be locked (not possible for the user to change) or not. Example: <autoReloadMenu locked="false">false</autoReloadMenu> Auto reload menu is set to locked="false">false< which means that auto-reload is switched off but the setting is editable for the device user. Change locked = "true" if the control is to be locked for the user to edit.

Change >false< to >true< if the control is to be switched on. The preference file is checked when a user signs in and when the menu is updated. For the scanner settings, we have two groups: Intermec (which includes Honeywell devices) and Symbol (which includes Zebra devices). In the example preferences file attached to this issue, we have added some examples of these.

Only Flow settings can be locked from user edit, not scanner settings.